Page 16 of So Wicked

She felt a slight chill, but the thrill of excitement that followed it was much stronger. That brought guilt as well, but Faith couldn’t help it. She was going stir crazy out here with nothing to do, and she was tired of being treated like damaged goods. She would stay away from the Messenger case. Fine. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t help other innocents. It didn’t mean she couldn’t catch other killers.

Turk stopped behind a large, spreading oak tree surrounded by marble slabs in a ring around the trunk. The slabs here were of somewhat higher quality than the others, and some were inlaid with gold filigree. Evidently, the oak tree was a desirable location.

Turk looked at Faith, and the sober expression in his eyes told Faith that they had stumbled onto something big. When she walked around the tree and saw the woman lying in the middle of a ring of rocks with a sheaf of hickory branches in her hand, sunflowers over her eyes and a jar of honey and a bottle of red wine on either side of her head, she knew exactly what the police meant by disturbing.

The woman’s skin was flaccid and gray. Faith knew that if she turned the body over, she would find that side deeply ruddy and full from the blood that had pooled to the bottom of the body. A small bruise on her neck with a red dot in the middle told Faith the cause of death.

This woman had been poisoned, then laid to rest in a pet cemetery with vaguely Celtic motifs. A nametag over her left breast identified her as Dr. Lisa Patel, DVM.

Faith shared a sober look with Turk. They had come to Indiana to escape a mystery. Now, another mystery had found them.

“Okay, boy,” Faith said. “Looks like we’re going to have to catch another bad guy.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Faith sat on a stone bench twenty feet from the oak. A dozen people crowded underneath the tree, four uniformed police officers, a plainclothes detective, five CSIs, and a coroner and her assistant. One hundred feet past faith, police officers were pushing the last reluctant looky-loos out of the pet cemetery.

Turk sat in front of Faith, looking at her from time to time with a curious expression on his face. He probably wondered why she wasn’t ordering him to examine the crime scene.

She would get to that in a little bit, but she had to decide exactly how to go about that first. If her superiors found out that she was investigating a murder, she would probably be suspended without pay and put on notice, meaning that any further violation would result in the end of her career. On the other hand, if Carmel Police caught her snooping around a crime scene or investigating a murder without their knowledge, it would mean a minor scandal with the FBI and a guarantee that she would be forcibly retired as a field agent. But if she could get away with it, then she would suffer none of those consequences.

Could she get away with it, though? She often relied on local police forces to do the busywork that she couldn’t do herself. Without that manpower, could she be of help here?

The detective approached, shaking his head and swinging his arms as he walked. Faith would wait until she talked to him to make a decision on how to proceed.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” the detective said when he was within five yards. “I’m Detective Chester Slade.”

Slade was about Faith’s age, of average height and build. He had a handsome but somewhat soft-featured face with big blue eyes that no doubt made a certain type of girl swoon fiercely.

Romance was nowhere near Faith’s mind right now, though, and wouldn’t have been even if she was single. By the expression on Slade’s face, romance was nowhere near his mind either.

“Faith Bold,” Faith replied.

Slade frowned. “That sounds familiar. FBI agent Faith Bold?”

She tensed a little. “Yes.”

If Slade had an opinion on Faith's reputation, he didn't share it. He nodded and said, "Well, it's nice to meet you in person, Special Agent Bold. Sorry, this is your introduction to our town."

He gestured to the body, which was being carefully lifted onto a gurney for the coroner to take. “Second vet in two days found like this.”

Faith raised an eyebrow. “Exactly like this?”

“Well, we’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report to know for sure, but yeah. Almost certainly.”

“Damn.”

“You can say that again.” He took his hat off and fanned his face, odd considering that it was only thirty degrees outside. “We expect this kind of thing in Indianapolis, but not here. Not that Indianapolis is a particularly dangerous city, but it’s a big city, and that’s usually where you get crap like this.”

Actually, almost the opposite was true. In the city, you had a lot of murder motivated by economic stress, but this kind of ritualistic display was far more common in rural areas and suburbs. She didn’t tell Slade that, though.

“I noticed a needle mark on the victim’s skin,” she said. “They were both poisoned?”

“Dr. Summers definitely was. I assume Dr. Patel as well.”

“May I ask what the poison was?”

“Pentobarbital.”

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